Art Within Music
by Ailia Kate Kira
Summary: "I just want to know the name of the person who ran into me." "Hotaru Imai." "Hotaru Imai… that's a nice name. I'm Ruka Nogi."    A simple story about a pianist who has lost the way.    One-shot. ;


_**So I'm kind of back from the dead to those who are following my fanfiction account. I've been out of plot bunnies for a long time, but you can count school as one of the reasons why. Here, I have a story I made for Filipino class. I was never good at writing in Filipino, so I write things in English before translating them into Filipino. This story had to go through some minor edits to keep a consistency through the pairing I chose. Some of them would probably be out of character, but really, I just hope you enjoy. :)**_

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**Art Within Music** by_ liledormouse_

She liked art, especially paintings and drawings. She liked it to the point that she drove herself insane due to the fact that she had zero artistic skill at all. Not completely zero, but rather her artistic talent was playing instruments. She knew how to play the piano and flute like a professional and she was a genius when it came to learning new instruments. Critics call her a musical prodigy; sure, she was glad to know that, but music never got to her deeply.

As she walked through the halls of the school building, she admired the different things posted on the walls. It ranged from painting to photographs to inspirational quotes. It made her smile yet gloomy at the same time; music can't be posted, it's heard. That is probably one of the reasons why music never appealed to her as much as art.

Due to too much thinking, she accidentally walked into someone and all of the person's things fell down. She crouched and picked up the stuff that fell, but as she picked up one item after the other she got distracted by them. Paint of different kinds, paint brushes, colored pens, pencils, markers, a sketch book—great, she just had to run into an Art major. She looked at the person in front of her: it was a boy with headphones around his neck, scruffy hair, but it suited him in her opinion.

She tapped his shoulder with her free hand and the boy looked up to meet her gaze. She liked his eyes; they were in the shade of blue. She looked at him with a straight face though her eyes gave away that she wanted to apologize sincerely for walking into him and so she requested to accompany him to his next class to make up for the accident. The boy laughed and complied with her request.

The walk to the room was awkward because the girl didn't know what to say. She wanted to ask if what year he is or if he was actually and art major, but she was only one to prod into people's lives when really needed.

"You look distracted," the boy said. The girl just kept her stoic face. "I might be just a one time meet, but I've learned that bottling up problems doesn't solve anything."

The girl sighed. "I feel lost or maybe, confused." The boy looked at her with wonder. "I came into this school as a music major, but art gets my attention more. I've thought of transferring majors, but I'm not good at art. Like, I have 0% skill."

The boy chuckled. "I've learned from experience that you should accept what skills you have or don't have, but at the same time not letting it limit you. For all you know, you can connect what you like to something you're good at doing."

What he said made her think. She should accept that she's really skilled at music; that's a check. Accept that she will never be good at art? That was tough for her. Wasn't she taught that she could achieve anything with perseverance?

She hears a door slide open and realized that they were at the classroom. The boy took the things in her hands and placed them down on a near by table. He patted her head, which she tried to shrug off. The gesture was too friendly to her liking.

"Don't think about it too much. The answer will pop up when you need it the most." He tossed a set of colored pens at her. "You can have this; it could help light up your day for all you know." She looked at the pens.

"What's your name?" The boy asked sincerely.

"Why? Is it of importance?"

"I just want to know the name of the person who ran into me."

"Hotaru Imai."

"Hotaru Imai… that's a nice name. I'm Ruka Nogi."

Ruka. It had a nice ring to it as she said it over and over again in her head. "Ruka… I need to go… I'm quite busy in truth." She turned around and walked towards the direction of the music rooms.

The walk towards the music rooms became a quiet one, but that is probably an after effect of meeting a random guy who happened to give you a complete set of colored pens. Surprisingly, the girl wasn't worried what intent the guy had when the pens were given to her because if something is given as free, might as well take it. She wondered though what to do with them.

As she approached the sign-in table, she took out her ID and skillfully took a pen from somewhere in the depths of her bag. Looking at the list of available rooms, she sighed in relief that her usual room was available. The room at the end of the hallway was her favorite for it was large and had a view of the lake near their school, but the final reason why she liked it was because it held the smallest baby grand piano in the school.

She fumbled through her bag taking out her piano scores and blank sheets of paper that already had staffs on them. She was in a midst of a project, which she was to perform in front of the student body. The thing with playing the piano, it would unconsciously show how one feels especially if the score is self made and she knew that the score she currently held on to had a confused feeling to it.

She played the tune, not caring where it would lead her, but that's how she always created transitions in her pieces. A few edits were done to the already placed notes before she continued to add more phases and measures onto them. Yet she lost the will to continue and looked outside the window.

The view of the lake was very captivating and she wished she could capture its very essence, but that was difficult. Showing its beauty through music was difficult because it stereotypes the place rather than capturing it. When you see a lake that captivating, one would start to think the words calming, which can be expressed but the color and vibrant nature in it, that posed problems.

She sighed heavily and went back to the piano, dropping herself onto the chair. She looked at the composition in front of her then at the colored pens on the table. She took the colors green and blue from the set and started doodling on her sheet. After a few minutes, she has stars all over it and some of the colors crossed the notes she wrote. She should rewrite that before she actually submits it, then it hit her.

Color.

All she needed in her work was color. Its vibrant nature attracted her a lot and that is the probable cause of why she liked art and photography a lot. In piano sheets, all you see are black lines and dots. Looking at that all day was just dull and at some point, you tend to mix up the message the sheet portrays and that's exactly the problem Hotaru had at times. With a few shadings and touch ups in areas, she finally saw the great picture of what Ruka said.

Two months had passed and it was the performance day. Hotaru stood there with her sheet music in hand waiting at the side of the stage for her name to be called. She was nervous, but she had to keep up her façade; the stoic one she always held. Currently performing in front of her was an artist known for his one-look sketching with a specialty of dance moves

"Thank you. That was Ruka Nogi. Next we have Hotaru Imai from the music department."

Hotaru walked towards the piano as she tried to dull out the clapping from her mind. She was anxious to see how people would treat her new musical art. She had spent two months working on it along with her best friend, Mikan, who was the technology wizard of their school much to people's surprise.

She sat down and placed her sheet music on the piano's dashboard. She took a deep breath, placed her fingers on the keys and looked at the score. She started with one long press on a key and what showed on the wall behind the piano was a dot slowly growing bigger. She stopped and created a sound to represent the confusion, which in turn caused the dot on the screen to move around excitedly creating smaller dots in the process. She continued on with her melody as it went into a transition that consisted of quick key presses. Through the quick presses, different colored dots came onto the screen. Suddenly the quick beat turned into a quick melody, which caused the colored dots on the screen to infect the black dots with color. The quick melody slowed down and turned into a smoothing melody as though it was trying to show you the greater picture. On the screen, the dots were trying to form a picture as the melody was smoothing out until you could see a figure. Hotaru ended her piece with a slide over the piano keys and a press on one key. This caused the dots to grow lines and with the last key pressed, the score sheet showed itself on the screen with color.

Hotaru sighed in relief. She finished her piece with no mistakes at all and she could hear the lively clapping from the audience. Her idea was a success and it ended just the way she wanted to. She smiled at the audience and bowed as the emcee went over to her.

"So this is your new idea you've come up with. What do you call it?"

Hotaru saw Ruka smiling at her from the audience. She mouthed a thank you at him, which Ruka gladly returned with a wink.

"I call it Art within Music."

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**Hope you enjoyed. I might be changing my pen name soon due to my on-going personality crisis. Again, hope you enjoyed. ;)**


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